The present invention relates to an electronic exchange apparatus comprising a control unit composed of a microcomputer and an exchange unit that actually effects exchange processing.
With the increasing communication needs and the advances in communication technology, apparatuses provided with various electronic exchange functions, such as private branch exchanges or data communication equipment, have been popular in recent years. This type of apparatus is generally provided with a microcomputer-based control unit, which supervises and controls the whole operation of the apparatus. The control unit of each apparatus is provided with a dedicated OS (operating system) on dedicated control hardware and is designed to cause the exchange unit--the hardware section provided exclusively for the apparatus--to operate by executing an exchange control application program in the OS environment.
With such a conventional electronic exchange apparatus, however, the software structure in the control unit is specialized for each type of apparatus (or the control unit has its own OS) and a general-purpose computer cannot be connected to the apparatus. This makes it necessary to develop control hardware and software unique to an apparatus each time the apparatus is developed. For example, when an application program for exchange processing is developed, it is necessary to develop the application program on the host computer and download the developed application program to the dedicated hardware environment in the control unit of the electronic exchange apparatus. As a result, the increase of the software development time has led to an increase in the development turnaround time and to the need for a dedicated central processing unit (CPU) emulator for software debugging, so that the development has required a lot of time and cost. Furthermore, since dedicated peripheral devices and interfaces must also be developed, it is difficult to keep up with new technology, such as optical disc devices. Therefore, it has been difficult to easily deal with the needs of users, such as upgrading the version.